APOLAN Unveils Top Five Factors Driving Passive Optical LAN Adoption

The Association for Passive Optical LAN Shares the Top Considerations to Ensure a Secure, Cost-Effective and Performance-Driven Network for Long-Term Business Success

The Association for Passive Optical LAN (APOLAN), the non-profit organization driving both education and adoption for passive optical local area networks (POL), released the findings of its APOLAN member survey, naming the top five factors that are driving the adoption of POL. These factors play a significant role in streamlining organizations’ smart building digital transformation strategies aimed to keep pace with the latest technology demands, such as IoT and mobility applications.

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“As organizations focus on technological strategy decisions for 2019, smart building digital transformation remains one the most important conversations taking place in the hospitality, education, enterprise, government and building/architecture markets,” said Alan Bertsch, Qypsys president and APOLAN chairman. “Leveraging the expertise of our APOLAN membership companies, we identified the following factors that decision makers must consider when re-evaluating their network backbone technology options to ensure both short- and long-term network success.”

1. Cloud: While classic LANs were originally designed to carry traffic between computers in a building or campus, today’s LAN must connect users to their software as-a-service (SaaS) applications running in the cloud. Unlike legacy systems, POL extends broadband Internet to LAN users by providing a superior connection experience to SaaS applications.
2. Investment Protection: Cost is always a key consideration when determining the best technology and investment strategy. A lower-cost, future-ready medium, fiber LAN provides utility and ROI for many decades beyond what is feasible with copper LAN cabling. With less equipment and lower energy and cooling needs, POL is simpler to deploy and to maintain, delivering greater CapEx and OpEx savings. It also eliminates the need for telecom closets, enabling organizations to convert this extra space into more revenue-generating areas.
3. Mobile Connectivity: Today’s advances in Wi-Fi, such as 802.11ax, not only carry more traffic than ever before, but also require networks to support a large number of users in a small area. Driven by this user demand and the significant influx of IoT applications, areas must also accommodate a growing number of connected devices, with each expected to guarantee superior accessibility. POL is an ideal match for these high-density scenarios as its level of connectivity meets the growing demand for mobile services and wireless technologies, and enables integration with a facility or campus wireless network infrastructure, including Wi-Fi and DAS, to ensure optimal results.
4. Network Convergence: Organizations struggle to ensure scalability that accommodates changing bandwidth needs, as well as availability that keeps business going with no unplanned interruptions. POL’s ability to converge all services on one network provides unparalleled speed, reliability and future-proof scalability.
5. Security: Protecting valuable data and assets is a growing concern for many organizations. The good news is POL reduces network points of vulnerability and has a proven track record of improving security for military agencies and government facilities. Unlike copper-based LANs, POL is not susceptible to electromagnetic interference, making it impossible to tap. In addition, it uses a centralized element management interface, which results in a reduction of human errors, and therefore, better security when performing everyday network configuration changes.

APOLAN members are among the most innovative players in the market in shaping the future of network connectivity. The survey was open to all Association members to provide insights into the key network and technology trends and topics relevant to today’s evolving market.

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